Negotiating ethical dilemmas in research: to act or not to act in the face of the normalisation of gender injustice encountered in the research process

This article focuses on research conducted in relation to the gendered dynamics of access to, and utilisation of, agricultural inputs in the quest for women’s empowerment. The article focuses on the ethical dilemmas that arose during the course of the research in relation to the claim that scientific research, particularly of the logical-positivist tradition, should not cause disruption to people’s lives and that researchers must remain detached and neutral. This contrasts with the requisite of critical, emancipatory social research, which calls for using research for transformational purposes. Our original research, upon which this article is based, reflects that while participants were aware of gender-discriminatory practices in accessing and utilising agricultural inputs, they were unwilling to challenge naturalised discriminatory and oppressive cultural norms. The ethical dilemma was whether to leave the participants’ views and gendered practices unchallenged, or to adopt strategies of consciousness raising in an attempt to engender change.

In Search of an Evanescent Object: Science and Its History

The authors start from the premise that science is an empirical manifold and then examine different ways of dealing with it. The traditional essentialist approach would construct a single “essence,” a unique and normative set of distinctive qualities that is to be found with minor variations in any branch of science. The usual elements in such a set are the concepts of fact, method, theory, experiment, verification and falsification, while any social, political and cultural processes or factors are discounted as external and collateral. This approach would provide a relatively straightforward account of what science is and reliably distinguish science from everything that is not science so that its claim to autonomy would be supported by a normative “strong” image of science. The history of science would then be reduced to a selection of illustrations of how that essence was formed and implemented. The most well-known versions of this essence and strong image are derived from a logical positivist philosophy of science and from the self-descriptions of many scientists, which are usually considered the authoritative explanation of science and often referred to when science is popularized. The authors point out some considerations that cast doubt on this privilege of self-description. Furthermore, scientificity requires that science itself become an object of specialized research. Studying the activities of scientists and scientific communities using the empirical methods of sociology, history and anthropology has exposed a divergence between the normative “strong” image and the actually observed variety of sciences, methodologies, ways to be scientists, etc. When those empirical disciplines are applied to science, they do not provide an alternative “strong” image of it, but instead construct a relativized and pluralistic “weak” one. The authors locate the crux of the dilemma of choosing between these images of science at the point where the desire to study science meets the urge to defend its autonomy. The article closes by briefly describing the current state of the history of science and outlining the possible advantages of choosing the “weak” image.

From “Bioethics” to “Christian Bioethics”: Significance of H.T. Engelhardt’s Legacy in Today’s Russia

A perception of “Christian bioethics” developed by the American philosopher Hugo Tristram Engelhardt in Russia requires a systematic interdisciplinary analysis. This is due to the realities of medical practice, as well as cultural and historical differences between the Russian and American societies. In Russia, there are certain difficulties in the open discussion of ethical issues in the public sphere. However, the recently growing participation of the Orthodox Church in public debates on the issues of medicine and biotechnology produce a basis for a reception of Engelhardt’s Christian bioethics. This article presents an analysis of how Engelhardt’s academic carrier was connected to his personal transformation, and how a “logical positivist” and physician interested in genetics, through his studies of continental philosophy, history of medicine, Catholicism and bioethics, came up finally as a founder of Christian bioethics based on Eastern Christian Orthodoxy. This analysis is purposed to expand the theoretical discussion of moral dilemmas posed at the intersection of medicine, religion and philosophy within the Russian academic discourse.

Intra-acciones en el aprender de docentes de infantil, primaria y secundaria

En este artículo, desde la perspectiva de los nuevos materialismos y empirismos, nos acercamos a algunas formas, modos, momentos y lugares de aprender de docentes de infantil, primaria y secundaria. Lo hacemos, no solo centrándonos en las interacciones con sus contextos, sino desde la noción de las "intra-acciones" para ir más allá de la metafísica del individualismo que subyace a las interpretaciones convencionales de las "interacciones”. Esto nos permite sobrepasar la separación que tiende a realizar la investigación lógico-positivista entre las personas y los objetos del mundo que les rodea, en este caso los contextos de aprendizaje de los docentes, al considerar que están interconectados antes de que la mirada del investigador los separe. Las cartografías de aprendizaje y las narraciones realizadas por los docentes que participaron en la investigación y las conversaciones mantenidas con ellos, nos han permitido identificar las intra-acciones de los espacios, tiempos, condiciones, expectativas, recursos, artefactos, etc., en sus procesos del aprender. Esto nos ha permitido vislumbrar la constitución mutua de organismos enredados y los difuminados límites entre los cuerpos y objetos, considerándolos fenómenos materiales discursivos. Desde una mirada post-cualitativa, situamos este análisis desde la teoría y lo que ésta permite pensar para que, más que ‘obtener resultados’, podamos contribuir a comprender el aprendizaje de los docentes y sus implicaciones para la práctica y la formación inicial y permanente. El artículo finaliza planteando la implicaciones y desafíos de este estudio en la forma de entender el aprender y en la formación del profesorado. This article aimed to approach some forms, modes, moments and places of learning of infant, primary and secondary teachers from the perspective of new materialism and empiricism. We did this, not only by focusing on interactions with their contexts, but also from the notion of "intra-actions" since our purpose was to go beyond the metaphysics of individualism which underlies conventional interpretations of "interactions". This allowed us to overcome the separation that logical-positivist research tends to make between people and objects. This article, therefore, considered that in teacher learning contexts teachers and objects are interconnected before the researcher's gaze separated them. The learning cartographies and narrations provided by the teachers who participated in the research and the conversations held with them allowed us to identify in their learning processes the intra-actions of spaces, times, conditions, expectations, resources, artefacts, etc. This enabled us to glimpse the mutual constitution of entangled organisms and the blurred boundaries between bodies and objects, considering them as discursive material phenomena. From a post-qualitative perspective, we situated this analysis from what the theory allowed us to think so that, rather than 'obtaining results', we contributed to understanding teacher learning and its implications for practice and initial and ongoing training. The article ended by posing implications and challenges regarding the usual understanding of both learning and pre-service and in-service teachers’ professional development.

Can We Talk about the Fall of Science?

The article analyzes the pessimistic scenario in relation to science, which characterizes contemporary science as regressing. It is shown that pessimism in relation to contemporary science is largely based on the formal-logical positivist image of science, which does not correspond to real scientific practice. It is shown, that postpositivist studies of science testifies in favor of the fact that science has never been “pure”. This approach allows us to rehabilitate technoscience and revise the pessimistic scenario.

Quantitative methods I: The world we have lost – or where we started from

Although pioneering studies using statistical methods in geographical data analysis were published in the 1930s, it was only in the 1960s that their increasing use in human geography led to a claim that a ‘quantitative revolution’ had taken place. The widespread use of quantitative methods from then on was associated with changes in both disciplinary philosophy and substantive focus. The first decades of the ‘revolution’ saw quantitative analyses focused on the search for spatial order of a geometric form within an, often implicit, logical positivist framework. In the first of three reviews of the use of quantitative methods in human geography, this progress report uncovers their origin with regard to the underlying philosophy, the focus on spatial order, and the nature of the methods deployed. Subsequent reports will outline the changes in all three that occurred in later decades and will chart the contemporary situation.

Shvaćanje logike i epistemologije u logičkom pozitivizmu

Alongside a brief historical account of the rise of the Viena circle, the author lists the main viewpoints concerning tlie conception of logic and epistemology inaugurated in the work of Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath and Moritz Schlick. A possible critique of the logical positivist conception of logic-mathematics resides in the appearance, for example, of alternative geometrical models of a non-Euclidian character where it is shown that logical-mathematical judgements do not only contain a tautological character. The epistemological positions of the followers of logical positivism remain within the framework of so-called traditional epistemology. The author emphasises the conflictual points of these epistemological viewpoints (foundationalism and coherentism) proffering a possible critique from the standpoint of a naturalized approach to the questions of the theory of knowledge,

Communicational and Message Theory Concepts and Notions

Communicational and Message Theory Concepts and Notions is a book of high intellectual elevation and high expression of ideas of Professor Stefan Vlăduţescu from University of Craiova-Romania, published by Editura Sitech, Craiova, Romania. Communication sciences refers to the schools of scientific research of human communication. This perspective follows the logical positivist tradition of inquiry; most modern communication science falls into a tradition of post-positivism. Thus, communication scientists believe that there is an objective and independent reality that can be accessed through the method of scientific enquiry. A scientist researcher following the zetetic method formulates the question then immediately sets to work making observations and performing experiments to answer that question. Communicational and Message Theory Concepts and Notions is a book about communication sciences in which professor Vlăduţescu approaches the subjects by zetetic method. The research was also combined with empirically traditional method to get both quantitative and qualitative results.

A failure to communicate: the fact-value divide and the Putnam-Dasgupta debate

This paper considers the debate between economists and philosophers about the role of values in economic analysis by examining the recent debate between Hilary Putnam and Sir Partha Dasgupta. It argues that although there has been a failure to communicate there is much more agreement than it seems. If Dasgupta's work is seen as part of the methodological tradition expounded by John Stuart Mill and John Neville Keynes, economists and philosophers will have a better basis for understanding each other. Unlike the logical-positivist tradition, which treats facts and values as two mutually exclusive concepts, the Mill- Keynes tradition recognizes that facts and values are intertwined. Unlike the Smithian tradition, which blends the study of facts and normative rules, it divides economics into a science that studies "what is" and an art which considers "what ought to be done".

5. Scientific change and scientific revolutions

‘Scientific change and scientific revolutions’ discusses the work of Thomas Kuhn who, in 1963, published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the most influential work of philosophy of science in the last fifty years. Firstly, the logical positivist philosophy of science and structure of scientific revolutions are explained. Kuhn's doctrine of paradigm shifts, of incommensurability, and of the theory-ladenness of data are then examined. He argued that his aim was not to cast doubt on the rationality of science, but rather to offer a more realistic, historically accurate picture of how science actually develops. Kuhn's work also played a role in the rise of cultural relativism in the humanities and social sciences.